


Bad Habit For It

by MadameReveuse



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Anal, Blow Jobs, Canon Compliant, Complicated Emotions, Expansive Use of Dream Sequences, Introspection, Just About Everything, M/M, Orgasm Delay/Denial, Rimming, Slime, cameos by all seven birds, just a big old wall of porn, object vore?, so no happy ending, weirdly sexual trolley problem
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-17
Updated: 2018-08-17
Packaged: 2019-06-28 13:21:10
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 20,173
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15708066
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MadameReveuse/pseuds/MadameReveuse
Summary: Parley takes a strange and unexpected turn as Merle seeks to learn more about John and his connection to the Light of Creation.





	Bad Habit For It

**Author's Note:**

> Once upon a time, I saw someone on tumblr say that there's not enough Johnchurch smut. I decided to deliver in this over-the-top manner and now here we are I guess.
> 
> This fic's title was taken from the song Bad Habit by the Kooks which I listened to while writing; you can listen to it while reading for the complete and authentic experience.
> 
> Obviously by the sheer length of it, I've been working on this for a while, and I'd love comments or a kudos, but if you don't want to comment on the porn fic, that's... fine. I hope you enjoy, I suppose.

Parley this year was happening early, against Merle’s wishes and best judgement. He didn’t like starting parley early, usually preferring to save it for the end of the year. For the first few times he had done it early, with the result that he had died and gotten nothing else out of the rest of the cycle. He hadn’t gotten to see the new plane or to help in retrieving the Light and, most importantly, he hadn’t gotten to spend any time with his family at all. Which bothered not only him but everyone else. They didn’t go out of their way to say it in so many words, but Merle could tell. He didn’t want to miss out on spending time with the team, and he didn’t want not seeing them to build up regrets and sour the mood between him and John. Their… he hesitated to even call it a relationship… was weird enough already.

But this year he was doing parley early. First thing after reforming, in fact. Lucretia would probably just burst into tears if he didn’t.

Last cycle had been bad, at least towards the end. They had all fallen a little bit in love with the plane they’d landed on, and watching the Hunger suck it in had been painful, as per usual when that happened. Merle thought they were all beginning to get used to that particular pain, and a part of him felt relief about that while another was horrified by all of their hearts hardening like that to the relentless omnicide they kept bearing witness to. But there were times when one of them… cracked, when things just got too much, and these times were hard for everyone, because there was nothing for them to do but comfort the afflicted person as best they could and carry on. There was no _escaping_ their situation.

When it happened to Magnus, he paced and punched walls and then tearfully apologized an hour later. When it happened to Davenport, he burrowed away in his work. Taako ranted, Lup disappeared for a while to blow off steam and chuck some fireballs at things, Barry brooded and Lucretia… well, Lucretia started spending a lot of time with Fisher or her journals, making a show of keeping her head up and carrying on and being mature, calm and collected… until eventually she crumbled and the floodgates opened. Which was what had just occurred. And then she had begged Merle to invoke parley, to find out something, anything at all. She’d been so desperate. What else could Merle do but comply?

However, he knew right away that it wasn’t going to be a good parley. The mood was all wrong. It was occasionally hard for Merle to remember that the rapacious force consuming planes and the soft-spoken man he played chess with were somehow one and the same, and he didn’t go out of his way to change that, because it made talking to John easier. But this time… this time Merle kept drumming his fingers against the table in annoyance at he knew not what, and John was… uncharacteristically mellow, as if to purposefully counteract every shred of tension that Merle felt. For one, he didn’t seem awfully involved in the current chess game. He moved his pieces with a lazy hand and not much consideration. Merle was almost frustrated at it being too easy as he took out one of John’s rooks.

“You letting me win today?” he asked.

“ _Letting_ you win?” John replied, sounding genuinely astonished. “Why would I do that now?”

Merle had come prepared for gloating. He had even been ready to put up with more of John’s infuriating monologues. He hadn’t been prepared for this… mildness. John was rarely ill-mannered, but he did usually have an edge to him, something crisp, something sharp in his demeanor. Now that edge seemed all but gone. Suddenly John was languid, the look in his eyes almost hazy. He had _loosened_ _his tie_ , goddammit. That didn’t just _happen_.

“You did get the Light this time around,” Merle said.

“So I did.” The smile that appeared on John’s face was only a tiny little bit smug. Mostly it was just… satisfied. “And really, Merle, I don’t exactly feel I’m having to make this up to you. You and your friends are the ones who have been playing keep away with me. And you’ve had a few successful turns just earlier.”

“Well, you know us, we’re sorta attached to our lives,” Merle grumbled. It was true that the last two cycles had worked out in the IPRE crew’s favor. After these two obtained Lights, Barry had excitedly proclaimed that he believed he could see the Hunger grow just that tiny bit smaller, and everyone had good-naturedly opted to believe him. If only they had a way of depriving the Hunger of its source of sustenance more permanently, over a longer stretch of time… maybe it would diminish further and further, until at last all that remained would be the original plane it had started from. Or maybe until all that remained would be the human John.

It was certainly _one_ solution they had thought of. Not Merle’s favored one, but nonetheless something to keep in mind.

“So, you know we’ve had these two lean years,” John said, as if reading Merle’s thoughts. Which was of course impossible. Or so Merle hoped. “I’ve got to admit it feels… nice to be satiated again.” John’s hand lingered over his utterly flat abdomen for a second as he said that. Merle felt strangely like he wasn’t supposed to look.

He scratched his head. “Is it… like food for you? The Light? Or more like getting a fix?”

John shrugged. “I wouldn’t say it completely translates into either. But there are aspects…” He trailed off and sighed. It was a pleasured kind of sigh. Hell, he seemed to even glow a little.

“But it doesn’t keep?” Merle asked.

“Unfortunately not. The more we amass, the more we need. Oh, excuse me…” John paused and delicately lifted a hand to his mouth in order, Merle realized, to stifle a hiccup. A bit of tarry, black ooze had bubbled up and John drew a handkerchief from his breast pocket in a smooth, practiced gesture and dabbed at the corner of his mouth with it. “Terribly sorry about that,” he said.

Merle was feeling distinctly uncomfortable. It was a different kind of uncomfortable than the kind John usually evoked in him. Usually, there was a general feeling of having to keep on his toes that came from their delicate exchange of information. This right here was not that. It was… hotter. More personal. More _privately_ unsettling.

_Just can’t stand how smug he’s being,_ Merle told himself. But here was the thing, John wasn’t smug at all. There was something… almost a bit dazed about him, like some kind of afterglow.

And wasn’t that just a great comparison, designed to totally put Merle’s mind at ease.

“Guess I should leave you to it,” Merle said and made to get up.

“Oh, please wait,” John stalled him, raising a hand but seeming physically unable to abandon his lounging position in his seat. “Do stay a little. I never get to experience this in a corporeal form…”

“And how does it feel?” Merle asked without really wanting to know, half-hoping for John to tell him off with some sort of ‘none of your business’ type phrase.

“It makes me feel…” John’s eyes turned to the ceiling as he seemed to be searching for the exact right word. “Refreshed? Certainly… renewed, somehow. And just…” he smiled and gestured a bit awkwardly for a second, “…full.”

Merle cleared his throat.

“I wish you could enjoy it with me,” John went on.

“Yeah, that’s not… thanks, I guess, but that’s not happening.”

“I’m not necessarily even saying let yourself get consumed by me. Since you seem… strangely resistant to that. I just… is there some other way to make this happen?”

Merle felt a bit lost at sea here. “What exactly are you thinking?”

“I don’t know, I’m just spitballing. I honestly believe you might be swayed to see things my way if only you knew how nice this feels.”

“And then you spend the rest of the year chasing that high.” Merle got up. “It’s a no from me.”

John clicked his tongue in faint annoyance. Finally, Merle thought. This he could deal with. “The Light is not a drug, Merle,” John chastised. “Don’t trivialize it. It’s what allows me… everything I am, everything we are to exist in this form.”

“Still. Hard pass.”

“A pity,” John said, and Merle was engulfed in flames.

 

* * *

 

When he reappeared on the Starblaster, Merle told the others what he had heard from John about his relationship to the Light, keeping it fairly clinical and focused on the bare facts. There was no need to go into detail about how weird it had made him feel. The way Barry nodded and muttered something about ‘just in line with my findings’ was gratifying, and so was Lucretia clapping her hands and exclaiming that “Some of this is actually useful!” although it felt somewhat backhanded as compliments went.

He went to sleep that night looking forward to a whole new cycle and a whole new plane to explore and tried to banish that last strange meeting with John from his mind. In his dream, however, he was back in the parley room, looking wordlessly at John, who sat opposite him, prim and proper as always. On the table, in the space usually occupied by their chess board, sat a simple white plate with a single, halved pomegranate on it. Slowly and meticulously, John was plucking the seeds out of it, one at a time, and popping them into his mouth. He didn’t say a word to explain this scene. Some bright red juice started running down his chin. It didn’t seem to faze him. Merle wanted to ask what was going on, but he couldn’t speak. He wanted to leave, but he couldn’t move. All he could do was watch this.

He woke up confused and a bit unsettled. It was still night, but he got out of bed anyway, wandering about the uncommonly quiet Starblaster. Everyone else was apparently still asleep, except for Davenport, whom he found curled up in the pilot’s seat, looking out of the large front window into the stars.

“Didn’t know you like to stargaze,” Merle said to him. It came out hushed, like any conversation held in the middle of the night might.

Davenport, upon noticing he was no longer alone in the room, immediately sat up proper. “Just keeping an eye out for the Light.”

“Uh-huh.” Merle nodded.

“And what are you doing up?”

“Oh, me? I’m…” Merle scratched his beard. “I had this weird dream.”

“About?”

“John.”

“I reckon we all dream of him,” Davenport said.

Merle’s eyebrows shot up. “Huh?”

“I know I do,” said Davenport. “I mean, I don’t know what he looks like, as you do. You described him, of course, but that’s not the same as looking him in his face. I have this mental image of him, but that might as well be a mile off.” He chuckled. “Still, sometimes I dream at night of finally facing off against him. Fighting him man to man, not… ship to abomination. You know. Not even killing him, really. Just a good, solid punch to the jaw for what he did. That’s all… that’s all I ask.”

“For sure, Dav,” Merle muttered. He appreciated Davenport admitting to this wish of his, letting his walls down a little. He always appreciated anything Davenport chose to share with him. He didn’t have it in him to confess that his… thing with John was not exactly like that. That when he thought of John, there was more there than pure animosity.

In the morning they went to look at the new plane, and Merle immersed himself in exploring and brushed the whole parley business off for the time being.

The new plane was largely covered in forest, but even after two months of searching, they had found no inhabitants; there was a rich animal life, but nothing sapient whatsoever. The animals and plants seemed similar to their poor devoured homeworld, and Merle spent a lot of time identifying flora with his keen botanical eye. The many and varied sources of fresh, edible fruit were a welcome sight, but Merle had to admit he felt a bit bored. An aspect he liked most about interplanar travel was getting to know planes with entirely new, strange plant life the likes of which he’d never seen before. He loved to really get into those and learn all their plant secrets before… they almost inevitably got destroyed. He loved to take specimen up to the Starblaster, and his room was getting increasingly covered in green.

One day he discovered a tree hanging low with fruit that he easily identified as pomegranates. His strange dream came back to him. He plucked one, borrowed Magnus’s knife and sliced it open, sampling a taste of its juicy flesh. It tasted just like the pomegranates at home. Some juice ran into his beard and streaked it pink. Nothing special here.

“Isn’t it weird how things will parallel on some planes but not on others?” Barry mused. “Like this plane has pomegranates, but others will not.”

“Don’t sweat it, Barold,” Lup said and pelted Barry with a fruit. “Have some. You need vitamins.”

After that, Merle had the dream a few times. It was always the same – he would watch John eat a fruit and they wouldn’t say a word. He was beginning to feel… frustrated with the whole scene. He wanted to know what was going on. He wanted… more to happen in it.

The further they got into the year, the more Merle felt his team starting to give him side-glances. He hadn’t announced when he’d be going back to parley yet. He was aware that he was putting it off, and that the others were starting to wonder about that. With the raised pressure of that, the dreams returned in full force. They were changing, now: in one of them, John scooted close to Merle and started feeding _him_ pomegranate seeds, his fingers dripping with red pressing softly, ever so softly, but firmly and unyieldingly to Merle’s lips. He woke up from that one with the most confusing boner ever.

Feeling conflicted about taking care of it, he got up and decided to walk it off. On the deck of the moored Starblaster he ran into the twins, hanging out, talking and keeping their eyes out for the Light descending. _Does nobody ever sleep on this ship?_ Merle thought with some mild annoyance.

“Anything out there?” he asked them.

“No, not yet,” Lup said, hiding a yawn behind her hand. “It’s never been this late. Barry says he thinks we missed it.”

“I can take over here if you wanna catch some z’s,” Merle offered.

“No, it’s cool,” Lup said. “Whatcha doing out here anyway?”

“Just woke up,” Merle muttered.

Taako shot him a look that was way too knowing. “So, how’s parley going?” he asked. “Charm his fancy pants off yet?”

That was Taako for you. Most of the time he seemed blissfully ignorant of anything not directly concerning him or his sister, and then he steamrolled you like that.

“His pants remain on,” Merle said. Taako could do with that what he wanted.

“We’ve, uh, sort of been wondering why you haven’t gone yet,” Lup said carefully.

“Yeah, we’re kind of tired of seeing you hang around here every day,” Taako threw in.

“What he means is,” Lup said, good-naturedly rolling her eyes at her brother, “we’re glad you’re spending some more time with us and not just… dashing off to chat with Johnny Vore all the time, but here’s the thing, if the whole… parley gig is too much for you, you can take a break. Hell, or stop it altogether.”

“Yeah, look, we’ve not been saying anything, but the info you’ve been getting has been sort of…” Taako paused. “Not the _most_ helpful _ever?”_

Merle was astonished to hear that people seemed to be thinking he’d been _dashing off_ to talk to John. Parley wasn’t a walk in the park. But hey, it was something he could do that helped, at least somewhat, or so he hoped.

“Nah, I think I’ll keep at it,” he said. “I know he’s not been giving us a lot of information, but I think… I should keep on trying. Who knows, maybe he’ll listen to me about stuff.”

“What,” Taako said, “and spit all these planes back out? Blow off his vore crusade because you convinced him with the power of friendship?”

“Stranger things have happened,” Merle said.

“Honestly? I’ve no idea what those things would be.”

“All we’re saying is, you’ve sort of been putting it off this cycle and we’ve noticed,” Lup took back over. “And if you said you had enough, or he’s being too much of a dick, no one would get mad or anything.”

“I’ve not been putting it off because… it’s not that he’s too much of a dick.” Merle shrugged. How could he possibly explain what was happening to him? He had no idea what it was, himself. “He’s just a weirdo. Talking to him is weird.”

“Talking to _you_ is weird,” Lup said. “You guys should be getting along great.”

“Maybe they’re getting along _too_ well.” Taako waggled his eyebrows. “The plantfucker and the vore guy? Match made in heaven right there.”

“Koko, ew!” Lup burst out laughing. “I don’t even wanna imagine? That’s so gross.”

“Think about it though,” Taako said, grinning, “what if he came home one day like, yeah, me and the Hunger, we’ve been fuckin’…”

“Fuck no! Dav would have a stroke.”

“Two strokes!”

“And Creesha would give up the ghost.”

“Yup, she’d just die.”

“She’d feed us all to Fisher to spare us the memory.”

The twins laughed. Lucretia, feeding anyone’s whole being to the Voidfish? It was a ridiculous thought.

* * *

 

The thing was, Merle had to go back. John… didn’t just cease existing when there wasn’t parley. He was still out there, stuck in a hellish, all-consuming plane monster, probably just searching for the Light, but maybe also thinking of Merle. It was an intriguing concept that John… was out there all the time. Maybe he was also in two minds – or a trillion minds – about parley. He didn’t sleep as far as Merle knew, so he probably didn’t have weird dreams. But maybe he could think weird thoughts.

 

* * *

 

He waited until almost the end of the cycle, suffered through a few more months of strange and increasingly arousing John-centric dreams that he tried to blame on decades of blue balls, until he went back. John was waiting for him with the chessboard set up, in the process of pouring two glasses of water as Merle came in, all as per usual.

“Hi, Merle,” he said. “You’ve made me wait. I was almost afraid you’d left for good.” It was said lightly, almost in the tone of a joke, but Merle noted the use of the word _afraid_. It made him feel… appreciated, maybe, as silly as that was.

“I had a busy year,” he said.

John sniffed. “What, on that dumpy plane down there?”

“I was spending some time with my family,” Merle clarified. Not technically a lie. He hadn’t violated the Truth Zone yet. “Pretty important, y’know, family.”

“Is it?” John said, only mildly interested. “Well, for you it might be.”

“Did you have one? A family? Way back when?”

John seemed to think about it, then he shrugged. “It’s really been so long, you know. I really don’t recall.”

“Sounds lonely.”

John smiled faintly. “How could I be lonely? We’re in the trillions in here.”

“That’s not the same,” Merle objected.

“Well, there’s also our yearly conversations,” John said. “Which is already more in the way of company than I initially bargained for. Ah, no offense meant.”

“None taken,” Merle muttered. In fact, he was… undecided yet on whether or not to take offense.

“Right, so, my turn to ask a question,” John said.

_Oops_ , Merle thought. Lucretia would probably be grouchy when she heard that he had blown his question on asking if John had had a family.

Aloud he said, “Hit me.”

“Well, Merle, I’ve been… hm.” John paused, looking thoughtfully at the ceiling. “How to go about this. I’ve been thinking.”

“Right.” Merle gestured at him to go on.

“Since our last parley I’ve been… wondering. About some things. Concerning the both of us.”

Merle nodded. “Uh-hmh.”

“My question today, I guess, is going to be more of a proposition.”

“Okay.” Merle was starting to sweat. John couldn’t possibly be using ‘proposition’ in _that_ sense.

“Our conversation last time gave me an idea. Would you be amenable to adding a more… physical component to these parleys of ours?”

Oh holy shit. This, Merle supposed, was really happening. “Depends,” he said. His mouth felt dry. “What do you mean by physical?”

John put his hands down on the table, a firm, decisive gesture. “I’ll come right out with it, Merle,” he said. “I want—”

Before he got to finish saying what he wanted, a sudden wobble went through the parley space. It didn’t feel so much like the ground shifting under their feet, but like the whole atmosphere was quaking for a second.

“What was that?” Merle asked.

John got to his feet and cast a quick glance around. “Wouldn’t you know? This place exists because of your magic.”

“Well, I didn’t do that.”

“But then what… oh. Perhaps it’s…” John gnawed at his fingernails in what looked suspiciously like nerves. “Maybe you should go. _I_ should go. It’s really late, we both shouldn’t be here now!”

There was a bright flash of light and suddenly, suspended in midair between them, there it was: the Light of Creation. Merle scrambled to grasp for it, but John was faster. He caught it with ease and held it close to his chest.

In his hands, the watermelon-sized ball of light that Merle had become familiar with seemed to lose its shape and coherence. It dissolved into a runny, glittering goo that John, without hesitation, easily funneled into his mouth.

Merle was too stunned to attempt anything to stop him.

The Light, as if in self-defense, gave off one last pure white ray of light that blinded Merle momentarily, then, as John inclined his head and swallowed heavily, pelican-like, it went down. Merle blinked and rubbed his eyes and when he opened them again, John was back in his seat, his head bent, one hand steadying himself against the table, the other clamped proprietarily over his stomach. His breathing was heavy and labored. Black goo was dripping down his chin.

“Uh, John?” Merle asked. “What the fuck was that?”

“I’ve got… it… I won… this round…”

“You do this shit every year?” He understood the implications of this whole scene. Outside the parley, in real space and time, the Hunger was absorbing another plane right this very second. Apparently it was able to do this even when John, its centerpiece, was here. Or perhaps John was in two places at once. John _was_ multiple places at once. Merle could barely wrap his mind around it all. Especially not with John here like this, looking like he’d walked right out of Merle’s wet dreams but so much worse.

John took a deep breath. “Not every year… obviously. And not… like this.” He leaned back in his seat. His eyes were heavy-lidded, his mouth drawn into an unfamiliar smile of pure bliss.

Merle couldn’t help it, he had to chuckle. “You look absolutely blitzed, buddy.”

“I know… it’s hardly… dignified… but ah…” John extended a hand Merle’s way and made a lazy beckoning gesture. “Merle. C’mere.”

Merle wanted nothing more than to run away, but there was no _away_. The rules of parley didn’t allow for it. And then he also wanted, with an equal if not greater intensity, to get closer to John. So, with his feelings all in turmoil, he stepped around the table.

As soon as he was within reach, John grabbed Merle’s hand. “I want you,” he said, “to share this with me.”

“Johnny boy, you’ve got to realize I’m not exactly thrilled by watching you swallow this whole—”

All the air seemed to leave Merle’s lungs at once when John guided his hand to where his stomach bulged out under his dress shirt. Maybe it was just Merle’s imagination, but he thought he could feel the Light of Creation shifting around in there.

He felt a wave of helplessness at practically holding the Light in his hand yet being completely unable to claim it. It was as close and as far away as it could possibly be. He almost had it, and yet he’d lost it, irrevocably so.

It didn’t help that he suddenly realized that he was touching John for the first time ever. Or that his dick was growing hard in his pants.

“Yes. Touch it. That’s right,” John murmured, for all intents and purposes looking drunk on it. “Feel this too.”

Merle cleared his throat again. It seemed very dry. “Johnny.”

He became suddenly aware of how close they were, and that he was standing in between the human’s spread legs.

“Mmh.” John seemed too dazed to even object to the nickname. “See this, this is nice, isn’t it.”

Merle could’ve thought of many ways to describe it. _Nice_ certainly wasn’t one.

“I wanted to show you...” John chuckled a little. He was almost slurring. God, Merle thought, he was _wrecked_. That light was one hell of a drug. “Might still fuck me like this, hmm? C’mon. Now that we’re already here like this.”

“You’re not… I have to go.” Merle shook his head, trying to get some order into his thoughts. “This cycle’s almost over, your… _thing_ just chowed down on another plane. The ship… there’s no time, just off me quick.”

“There is time.” John leaned forward, groaning under his breath as the Light situated in his midsection made the movement difficult and unfamiliar. He grasped Merle by the shoulders and pulled him in for a sticky, sloppy kiss.

“Come on,” he breathed against Merle’s lips. “Come, don’t play coy now. I can already feel it draining from me, _come on_ …” He palmed Merle’s dick through his Bermuda shorts. It quickly grew fully hard under his touches, sparks travelling up and down Merle’s spine. Merle let out a gravelly sound from deep down his throat and pressed another kiss to John’s lips. Black gunk was still dribbling out of John’s open mouth, and Merle wiped some away with his thumb. It was getting everywhere on both of them, sullying John’s shirt and making smears on Merle’s bare skin. They both gasped into each other’s mouths as Merle let his hands wander lower, grasp John’s hips and start to shimmy his pants off. John almost purred as he huddled closer, his hand slipping into Merle’s pants, and then…

…everything faded to white.

Merle woke up on the ship and everyone was shouting at him. He blinked, disoriented.

“What happened?” he asked. “Did the… oh. The cycle ended, is that it?”

“Yeah,” Taako said. “What the fuck, old man? What kept you so long?”

“We had no idea what was going to happen if we passed between realities with you still in… there,” Davenport added, gruff and shaken.

“Don’t ever scare us like that again,” Lucretia said, wrapping her arms around herself.

“Parley just… dragged on a while,” Merle said. “Sorry.”

“What the fuck were you doing?” Lup asked. She moved in to hug him and Merle almost took a step back. He felt like by all rights he should still be covered in black slime. That was impossible, but somehow he felt sticky in spirit.

“Goddammit, Johnny,” he muttered.

“What the fuck did he do to you?” Magnus asked, interpreting Merle’s body language just a slight bit wrong.

Merle shook his head, internally thanking Pan for giving him skin that was too dark to show a blush. “He didn’t _do_ anything _to_ me. I… it got weird, I admit that. I watched him… I watched him swallow the Light of Creation. Right in front of me.”

“Vore time,” Lup muttered.

“Blegh.” Magnus stuck his tongue out in disgust.

Merle could barely restrain himself from wiping invisible slime off his face. “Listen,” he said to the room at large. “Shower first, explanations later.”

 

* * *

 

Somehow after the shower, he managed to dodge most of the explanation. He gave Lucretia a short overview of what it had been like to watch John swallow the Light; he left out how weirdly hot it had been. He left out everything that had happened afterwards. It was perhaps the most he’d ever omitted in his report to her.

He went to bed that night not knowing what to do with himself. He wanted to stay away from parley for a couple of months and preserve his sanity. He wanted to hop right back into parley this instant and finish what he and John had started. They’d both been left hanging and that wasn’t right. Merle wanted more of John like this, of his kisses, his touches. The obvious fact that _sex with John_ now seemed a thing that was on the table opened up a world of new, exciting possibilities.

Reason won out in the end. Determined to put parley aside for a month at least, Merle fell asleep.

In his dream he was laid out on deck of the Starblaster, like he sometimes did to sunbathe. He knew, with that rock-solid dream knowledge, that there was no one else on the ship at present. Above him, the Hunger filled almost the entire sky, but there was no imminent attack. Something was different. The large, imposing mass of the sentient plane just hovered there in the sky, almost immobile, almost serene. Inky, vine-like protrusions snaked down from it, streaked with all the colors of the rainbow, but these weren’t the thick pillars that Merle had come to know. They were wispy, fine and almost elegant, and instead of smashing into the landscape, they all floated towards him. Soon, Merle felt a questing tendril brush his face, his torso, his left arm. It did not hurt. It felt like the touch of a warm, moist hand.

More tendrils joined the first one, many wrapping around his arms and legs, not gripping tightly or even restraining him, just being there, exploring him. Others stroked his chest and stomach, drawing patterns of the same black ooze that Merle had already encountered. It occurred to him to be a little afraid. Why were they doing that? On the other hand, all these nice, soft touches didn’t actually feel too bad…

A lot of tendrils snaked under his shirt, bunching it up almost under his chin. More of them began to tug at his pants, growing in insistence, until Merle could hear stitches split and fabric tear apart. Soon enough he was completely exposed, shivering and at the mercy of the tendrils poised above him. About five of them descended on his dick, enveloping it completely in a wet, warm embrace, stroking counterpoint with each other. Another one, lathered in black goo, prodded at his entrance, opened him up deliciously slowly and entered him at last, rubbing steadily against his sweet spot. Merle heard himself moan and curse as he quaked and bucked up into their ministrations. The tendrils almost enveloped him fully now, their wet, hot slide all over his body.

“Harder,” he bit out. “More, goddammit, is that all you’ve got?”

And the Hunger reacted to him. The tendrils around his cock squeezed tighter, the one in his ass seemed to grow thicker. White eyes opened on the underside of the monstrosity high up in the sky, innumerable white eyes and Merle knew that these were all John’s eyes, that these were all John’s multitudes, watching him.

“Johnny,” he moaned, raising a hand to the sky, as if reaching out for the Hunger in its enormity. The tendrils lapped at him, so wet and so hot.

He woke up gasping, his blanket tangled around his legs, his cock hard and straining.

He had to go back to parley.

 

* * *

 

When he got back, John was already seated, his hands folded in his lap, his foot tapping impatiently.

“Ah, Merle,” he said. “Not avoiding me this time?”

“I wasn’t avoiding you last time,” Merle said and sat in his accustomed seat.

“Merle, please. What did we say about being truthful in here?”

Merle huffed. “Fine. I guess I needed some time to myself.”

“But now you’re here.” John got up and came around to Merle’s side of the table. “And so quickly too. Now, since we were so rudely interrupted…” He leaned down and crushed his lips on Merle’s.

This kiss was not sticky. It was a hard, bruising, glowing thing. John’s hand settled on Merle’s shoulder, his nails digging painfully into the skin. Merle tugged on John’s tie to get his attention.

“Hold on, hold on. Questions first.”

John frowned. “Do we have to?” His almost petulant tone made Merle chuckle.

“Don’t you think you can distract me from that, big guy.”

John withdrew from Merle’s personal space but instead of returning to his chair he, to Merle’s surprise, planted his butt on the edge of the table. He reached out and spun Merle’s chair so that Merle was eye-level with his crotch. Merle ignored that and gazed upwards into John’s face.

“So, what would you like to ask?” John said.

“What was going on with you last time? I mean…” Merle paused to collect his thoughts. “Do you eat the Light every year? Like that? Was that… was that normal? How did… what did the… how does it translate? I mean, you’re in here, the- the part of you that eats these planes is out there, how… does that work?”

“That’s not one but many questions,” John said, “and none of them easy to answer.”

“Try,” Merle said.

John thoughtfully tapped a finger against his mouth. Merle couldn’t help but watch. “I don’t personally eat the Light,” John said after a moment. “Not like you saw me do. I’m not usually a separate entity from the… well, from the rest of it at that point of the cycle. It never happened like that before. Merle, this would be much easier if you’d just find it in yourself to tell me what you call me.”

“Nu-uh.”

“What’s so important about it? Just tell me.”

“Well, it seems like you really want to know, so…”

“So you’re keeping it from me for that exact reason.” John huffed.

Merle sighed and scratched his beard. “I call you John,” he said. “That’s your god-dang name.”

John ducked his head, apparently trying to suppress a smile. “Fine, be like that,” he said. “As far as I understand this weird pocket dimension of your making, by… invoking parley, I guess, you pulled me out of the… well, out of the mass and in here. But the rest of me is still out there, and I’m still bonded to it, and I still know what it does and think what it thinks. When we acquired the Light, it ended up here. I just took it in for the rest of us to process.”

“That’s why you said it was draining from you?”

“Yes. It happened… regrettably fast.” John blinked. All these parleys and Merle had never really _noticed_ the man’s eyelashes before.

“Okay,” he said. “What do you wanna ask?”

“Me? Oh…” John casually put his feet on the armrests of Merle’s chair, caging him in. “Why were you so reluctant last time? Do you not want me like that?”

The question hit without warning. Merle felt himself blush again. What could he possibly say to that?

“Hey, I ain’t easy.”

“You do come here shirtless.”

“That’s because I’m humbling myself! Parley is all about humbling yourself! If you think that’s a sex thing, that’s on you!”

John was clearly amused. Still he steered them back on topic. “No but really, Merle.”

He settled for, “You weren’t in your right mind.”

This seemed to surprise John. His eyes went wide and round. “Beg pardon?”

“The Light was, ah…” Merle cleared his throat, “…doing something to you. I don’t know…”

“You were concerned for _me?”_ John let out a laugh, a surprised, almost startled sound.

“Well, I mean… I just don’t make a move on someone who’s… out of it like you were.”

John suddenly grinned and reached out a hand to cup Merle’s jaw. “Don’t worry about that anymore.” He was almost purring now. It made Merle’s stomach do a very weird flip. “Let me tell you preemptively that I’m perfectly… willing.”

“P-preemptively, huh?”

John casually rested his foot, expensive dress shoe and all, directly on Merle’s still-clothed dick.

“Oh.” Merle gulped.

For a second, they stared at each other, frozen. John began to draw patterns on Merle’s inner thigh.

“What are you thinking, Merle?”

Merle was sweating. He couldn’t resist John like this, so absolutely in charge. It was worrisome to say the least.

“Please don’t kick me in my balls.”

John laughed and withdrew. “Maybe another approach…”

He slid down from the table and started undoing his belt. The motion of his hands alone, the click of the buckle opening, made Merle’s dick twitch.

“Hold on,” he said, reaching out and grabbing John by the hips. “Let me.”

John seemed again surprised but raised his hands in submission. “At your service.”

Merle quickly tugged John down onto his lap. John straddled him and kissed him again, and soon they were fervently making out, hands roaming over each other’s bodies, fumbling with zippers and buttons. Merle undid John’s tie and threw it aside while John’s hands between them were working in earnest at Merle’s pants. John slid his jacket off by himself, but Merle got impatient with unbuttoning his shirt, so he ripped it open, sending the buttons flying. It made John gasp and pull back in the middle of a fervent kiss, breathing a bit heavily but trying his best to muster a glare.

“Oh!” he said. “My shirt!”

“You’ll have it back next cycle,” Merle said gruffly. He smoothed his hands down John’s torso. So much bare skin, so suddenly exposed, his to mark and to explore…

“Let’s hope so,” John almost pouted. “Hey, lift your hips.”

Merle did so and together they managed to get his shorts mostly off. They still dangled around his ankles, but he didn’t care. John only raised an eyebrow at the fact that he wasn’t wearing anything underneath.

“Commando,” he remarked, “Suits you.”

Merle discovered that John was wearing boxer briefs. They were the same gray as his suit. John, if anything, seemed surprised to see them himself.

“Aren’t we the cliché,” he muttered.

“You said that.” Merle gripped John’s hips again and slotted their cocks together, earning him another gasp from John. He took both of them in hand and stroked them together; it seemed like the easiest thing to do. John’s eyes fell closed and his breaths grew ragged at the contact, but he only bore it for a minute before he put a hand on Merle’s chest, pushing him slightly back.

“Wait… wait,” he said. “Don’t… not going to finish like this.”

“Hmm? What do you want to do, Johnny boy?”

John grabbed the back of the chair for support, lifted his hips and made to sink down on Merle’s cock.

“Hooold on,” Merle said, “Easy, tiger. Prep first.”

John smirked. “Who do you think you’re dealing with?”

Merle saw that the black ooze was back, pooling between them, making yet another sticky mess. John scooped some of it up, pushed himself back up on the table and demonstratively fingered himself.

“See, I’m ready. Let’s get _on_ with it.”

The angle was awkward like this, what with their height difference, so Merle got John back onto his lap. He held on to John’s thighs as John eased downwards on Merle’s dick. He felt so hot, so tight, but there was enough give there for the experience to cause no discomfort to either of them.

John was biting at his lower lip, probably in order to suppress a moan. Merle stared, transfixed. Further down south, his cock was being steadily enveloped in a heavenly tight, wet heat, but still he found himself focusing on John’s lips. In an impulse, he reached out and tapped two fingers against John’s mouth. John swirled his tongue around them, sucking them in as if he wanted to siphon the whole of Merle into his being.

Which, yeah, was exactly what he wanted, wasn’t it?

“Johnny,” Merle groaned.

John hummed around Merle’s fingers. He had gone all the way down on Merle and now reinforced his grip on the chair before rolling his hips.

Merle’s breath hitched. The movement felt delicious. “You’re so hot.”

“Mmmmnh.” John pushed himself up a bit and then bounced down again. Merle noticed that his thighs were trembling. It was so human. How could John be so human?

“Done this before?” he asked.

John popped Merle’s fingers out of his mouth with an obscene slurping sound. “Done this plenty,” he said, a bit short of breath already, “It’s just been a while.”

He rode Merle fast and hard, as if having to prove he was good at it. Merle trembled and clutched his hips and bucked up into him and a few times they ended up moving counterpoint to each other and had to pause and find a rhythm again. John cursed under his breath when that happened, which to Merle was almost unbearably sexy. His hands began wandering after one such break, cupping John’s ass and giving it a squeeze, which had John muffling another moan. Merle moved on, higher and around, using his thumbs to flick John’s nipples. John’s face turned an interesting color at that, so Merle leaned in and used his tongue instead. This time, John bit down on his own hand to not moan out loud.

“You don’t gotta do this,” Merle said, detaching his mouth from John’s right nipple. “I wanna hear you.”

John just stared at him for a second, then suddenly he surged downwards for another kiss. Merle had thought that their previous kisses had been fervent, but this one was on a whole new level. This time, John sunk his teeth into Merle’s lower lip hard enough to draw blood. It made his dick pulse with a fresh wave of arousal and he ground up into John, evidently brushing that sweet spot, because John made a keening sound and scratched his nails down Merle’s back.

“Gods, Merle,” he panted, “just fuck me.”

Merle complied, grinding his hips upwards again, and again, angling for that spot every time. The position was still a bit clumsy and he was starting to get winded, but John seemed to love it. He took a hold of his own cock and gave it a few firm, languid strokes, soon picking up the pace and working himself into a fever-pitch. His long, spindly form all but folded in climax, and he came with his head on Merle’s shoulder, biting down into the skin there. Merle chased him over the edge with a hand tangled in John’s sweat-damp hair, and pressed his lips to the top of his head as he finally finished.

They sat all tangled together for another minute as everything was winding down, both breathing heavily. John was the first to attempt to move away.

“No cuddles with you, huh?” Merle asked.

“Merle, it’s _sticky_.” John lifted his hips up off Merle’s dick, and for a second his face scrunched up at the sudden emptiness. Merle watched him strut about the parley room and pick up his discarded clothes.

“How the fuck do I explain that bite mark?” he wondered, pressing his fingers to it. It hurt a little, so he took his hand off.

“Will you even still have it when you get reformed?”

“Huh. Guess not.” Well, that settled that. It was almost a bit disappointing. They’d never leave a permanent mark on each other, which was a metaphor Merle didn’t care to stretch.

John frowned. He reached all the way across the table to grab his watch and checked the time.

“Time for round two?” Merle asked.

John shook his head with some genuine regret. “No, I must be going. But… you’ll come by again, won’t you.” It was, in some way, a question phrased as a statement phrased as a question.

“Sure I will,” Merle said. He was already starting to imagine a second time with John like this, what they might do to each other, what positions he wanted to try…

“Great,” John said, clapping his hands together. On cue, the black fire appeared. “See you soon, then.”

 

* * *

 

Merle didn’t have the bite mark when he reformed. He recounted, to the best of his ability, the few facts that John had told him about how he used the Light, and Lucretia took them down in her journal. As before, he avoided mentioning… everything else. The impulse to return to parley at once was again there, but he hesitated. Would it look suspicious? He didn’t want his family to find out about the turn his relationship with John had taken. They probably wouldn’t understand. He only half-understood it himself. But grander than any fear of their negative reaction was just the feeling that this whole thing between him and John was… private. None of the others really understood why he even kept going into parley, or what talking to John was like, or who John even really was. But Merle knew. Merle understood John better than anyone else alive – not agreed with him, not in the slightest, but at the very least knew of him. There was a person in the Hunger, and in some way that person was caught in an endless loop just as the Starblaster and her crew were, and Merle strongly disliked the thought of not going to see that person anymore. He was the only company that John ever had.

Besides, he hadn’t gotten any in literal decades. And for someone so severely out of practice, John had been stellar.

Merle had some stuff in the spank bank now to tide him over for a few weeks. His crewmates noticed he was frequently absentminded and had to excuse himself to his room a lot. In truth, being as he was a comfortably middle-aged dude, he hadn’t felt this… consistently worked up in a long, long time. But, well, there’d been a long draught, and now the memories he’d made with John were almost constantly on his mind, to the point where he felt like a horny teenager.

He held out over three weeks of jerking it in his bunk after lights-out and dreams that were full of John in compromising positions, then he invoked parley again. John hadn’t gotten the Light in the last cycle after Merle’s departure, so Merle expected to find him in a sour mood.

When he got there, John took one look at him, got out of his chair, strode over and caught Merle in a furious kiss. In a matter of seconds, they had their arms around each other and were making out as if the world was ending.

Eventually Merle untangled a bit from John and asked, “Woah, buddy, what’d I do to earn that?”

“Nothing,” John said, wiping his mouth. “I’m just glad we can continue where we left off.”

Merle couldn’t help but smile. “Glad, huh? So, you’re back on the human-feelings-train?”

John shook his head. “It’s an expression, now get those pants off.”

Merle laughed. “Right to the chase, huh?”

John slid onto the table, just like he had the last time, and already reached to open his pants. Merle put one hand on his knee and the other on John’s hand to still him.

“Hold on, questions first.”

John groaned. “Can’t we do that afterwards?”

“Nah,” Merle said, “I’ll forget and you’ll just kill me and I’ll get home to the family with nothing, and it’ll be a bummer all around.”

John rolled his eyes but relented. “Fair enough. Fine, you go first.”

Merle tried to think of something, anything that would be helpful. “You’ve… not had the Light last year, how does that affect y’all?”

John frowned briefly, then attempted to wave it off. “It annoys us. My turn.”

“What, just _annoys_ you? You guys aren’t… I mean, you’re okay in there, right?”

“How nice of you to be concerned for me.” John’s words were dripping with sarcasm. “We don’t suffer for lack of one Light, but it is… annoying to miss out on one. Now I do think it’s my turn.”

Merle shrugged. “Have at it, pal.”

As Merle had, John seemed to need a second to think of a question. “Is this… hm. Are your… well. You’re not telling your crewmates that we’ve slept together, are you?”

“How’s that an interesting question to you?” Merle asked, perhaps a bit defensively.

“It isn’t, not really, I just want to know.”

Merle wondered why John would want to know that, but he said, “It’s… sort of just between us two at the moment.”

“Oh, but you are going to tell them, right? Sooner or later?”

“You know what?” Merle said. “That was one question each. Let’s just get on with it, huh?”

John nodded and reached for his belt again, but Merle stilled him. “Here, lemme just.”

He gave John’s chest a light nudge and John understood its meaning and laid back. Merle opened John’s pants and shimmied them off the human’s long, skinny legs. He leaned in, draping John’s legs over his shoulders.

“Merle,” John said, “what…?”

He gasped and stilled as Merle kissed his thigh, licking and nuzzling his way further down. Merle knew that some people didn’t like how scratchy his beard felt there, and John was starting to squirm and tremble, so he detached his mouth and asked, “You good?”

“Merle, if you stop again, I’ll incinerate you.”

Merle chuckled. “Alright then.”

“Put your mouth to a better use. I want beard burn that I’m going to feel next year.”

Merle wasn’t sure how that was supposed to be possible, but he didn’t ask. Instead he leaned in and planted a kiss just above John’s cock. He kissed a path down its flushed length as John’s breath hitched, licked up a bead of precum (also black, like the ooze that Merle was becoming increasingly familiar with) and then bent his head further down to probe and lick at John’s hole.

“Merle!” John gasped. “You’re going to… oh _gods_ , yes.”

Merle only had to lick into John’s hole a few times before the muscle unclenched for him; soon the lower half of his face was wet with the black sludge that John’s body just seemed to produce for these occasions. He kept on lapping at it, flickering his tongue in and out of the tight opening, working it loose, listening to John’s noises of appreciation. John was wriggling a bit again, his legs wrapping around Merle’s shoulders and attempting to reel him in closer. John tasted… not unpleasant, but like nothing Merle had ever tasted before. The black liquid had grossed him out at first, but by now he was beginning to love it. Lapping it up was… electrifying, intoxicating, and he couldn’t get enough. He was almost painfully hard in his shorts. He moaned under his breath as he sucked at John’s puckered hole, which got a high-pitched noise out of John that was almost a squeak.

“Merle,” John ground out, giving the name about three additional syllables. “More. Come on. Stop _playing_.”

Merle straightened up. “Aren’t we demanding.” He gave John’s thigh a light slap and John arched and mewled and looked mortified at the sound just having left his mouth.

Before John killed him out of pure embarrassment, Merle plunged two fingers into him and watched John writhe in discontent. “No, Merle, come on. Stick your cock in.”

“The more you complain, the longer this is gonna take,” Merle warned and John looked rebellious for a second but then bit down on his lower lip to prevent more complaints spilling out. Spurred on by this, Merle took his sweet time while John rolled his hips up, trying in vain to quicken the pace, to fuck himself on Merle’s fingers.

Only when his own erection was clamoring for his attention, Merle took it out, lathered it with some of the notorious black sludge and lined himself up to push in. John whined as he removed his fingers, his hole clenching and unclenching against nothing.

“Merle, come on. I’m so empty. You’re not helping. I—”

Always demanding. Never begging.

Merle entered him nice and easy and sighed in contentment at how good it felt, how good John felt, how warm, how welcoming. John groaned deeply and arched into it again, taking Merle in deeper and deeper. What with how loose and how eager he was, and what with all the black liquid they had, Merle easily sank in to the hilt.

“Oh, yes,” John breathed, “oh, that’s more like it. Mmmh, you fill me up so right.”

“Always about that with you, huh?” The Hunger indeed, Merle thought.

John rolled his eyes and then his hips, too. “Move. Harder. Just fucking do it.”

It was so rare that he got John to curse. It was filthy and he loved it. Merle took up the pace a bit, nice, deep thrusts. John’s moans raised in pitch and he was clawing at the table, leaving marks in the wooden surface. With each thrust, each delicious, hot slide, Merle could feel himself getting closer. He hated being the first to finish, so he reached out an unsteady hand and closed it around John’s cock. John’s hips stuttered and jerked up into the touch, the rhythm they’d established between them almost faltering.

“Merle—!” John breathed and came, a splatter of black all over his stomach, with some neon streaks of color, just like the Hunger. The sight made Merle groan and rut into John even faster, more intensely, until he followed suit.

He remembered that John hadn’t wanted to stay close last time, so he moved to pull out immediately, only for John’s hand to still him.

“Stay,” John murmured. “Just a minute.”

Merle couldn’t stay in that position, so he also scaled the conference table and spooned John close to him. He pressed his face into John’s shoulder and inhaled his scent and for a moment, the two of them just breathed in unison.

“Hey, John?” Merle broke the silence eventually.

“Hmmm?”

“You taste like black licorice.”

John mumbled something that sounded like “yucky”.

“Nah,” Merle said, “I think I like it.”

He knew the moment the words left his mouth that it was too much too soon. John shifted and disentangled himself, sitting up and pushing a few errant strands of hair out of his face.

“Is this going to be a regular thing?” he asked in a disaffected tone Merle had to believe was fake, gesturing between them.

“It’s up to you,” Merle said, shrugging. “You know the workings of parley. I summon you, you call the shots from there.”

“But you’ll be expecting…?”

“What I’m expecting doesn’t matter. It’s your call. Y’know, like you make the call to kill my ass every dang time.”

“Oh, yeah.” John checked his watch. “I should be doing that now, shouldn’t I.”

“Well hold on—” Merle said and was eviscerated.

 

* * *

 

He went through the usual song and dance after reforming on the ship. This cycle, he was determined to really spend a while away from parley. _Not that John minds,_ he thought.

_Is this going to be a regular thing?_ The casual, almost careless tone in which John had asked that question had admittedly… stung. It hadn’t been that bad, had it? There was no way it could’ve been that bad.

But if John was going to be like that, he could damn well wait for it.

If he even wanted to do it again…

Merle took his time and tried to enjoy the new plane and the company of his family. He didn’t like keeping a secret from them, but what could he possibly do? He couldn’t tell them, could he? He couldn’t even imagine everyone’s reactions. Would they be disgusted? Would they feel betrayed? Would they try pressuring him into stopping the parleys? One thing was certain, they wouldn’t understand. Or would they? No, Merle told himself, no one could possibly understand.

The plane they’d landed on this year was inhabited, and the seven got along quite well with the settlement of natives they had happened upon. The people here were not like any sapient species Merle had ever seen; they were almost amphibian in appearance and divided in four subgroups (genders?), which in the language of the settlement were called _dwé_ , _akre_ , _sel_ and _hani_. The _sel_ seemed to live in symbiosis with the plane’s plant life; they had flowers and leaves growing organically out of and all over their bodies, a sight which Merle found extremely attractive. He befriended almost all _sel_ in the settlement, and halfway through the year, he took one to bed. It was sweet, it was passionate, and Merle always did love having sex with his nose buried in beautiful, fragrant flora. And if he felt occasional stings of… wrongness when he ran his hands over his partner’s body and it curved and felt differently from John, or if he bit back on John’s name when he came, no one ever had to know that. The point was, he thought to himself as he got out of bed in the morning and thanked the _sel_ for the wonderful night, he had gotten that whole thing out of his system. Sleeping with the inhabitants of the planes they visited always felt weird considering what they knew was about to happen to these people in less than a year’s time, so no one on the Starblaster made a habit of it, but then again, sleeping with John, who was for all intents and purposes still the thing that happened to everyone, presented even more of a moral quandary. Maybe, Merle thought, he just had to get around more on these planes.

He returned to parley after a comfortable amount of time had passed, and John made no move on him. He greeted him as if the last few parleys hadn’t happened, and Merle rarely felt awkward, but in this moment, he didn’t know what to do, how to act. He just stood uncomfortably next to his usual chair wondering what to do. Did he ask John about it? Did he just make his move?

John perceived his discomfort and exhaled, pinching the bridge of his nose. “You know what,” he said with a wave of his hand. “Why don’t we just play chess?”

They did that, they exchanged questions, and apart from that they didn’t talk much, save for the occasional “check” or “checkmate”. But this was a good thing, wasn’t it? They had both gotten it out of their systems now.

 

* * *

 

Upon reforming, Merle learned that the luscious plane with its beautiful plant people had been devoured. He dragged a hand over his eyes as exhaustion suddenly hit him, and retreated to his room. Over the next few days, he felt uncommonly low. Not even cracking jokes and compartmentalizing was working as well as it usually did.

_He ain’t ever gonna let me be happy,_ he caught himself thinking one night. _We get to some real nice plane and he snatches it up. This is just gonna drag on like this._

His next thought was, _Does John always feel this way?_

John had so far only hinted at his… frankly bizarre beef with the concept of eternity. But Merle had taken note of the deep-seated bitterness in his voice and bearing whenever they touched upon the subject. Now, he still was far from understanding what this was about, and he would never ever come anywhere near condoning the actions that John had taken and was taking, but maybe he got it a little bit, that feeling of being stuck in an endless rut.

Of course Merle always floated up to the surface, and feelings like these were usually temporary. For a moment, however, he wondered if it could be enlightening or at least entertaining to talk to John about feeling that way. Would he understand or would he gloat? Despite these questions, or perhaps because of them, Merle didn’t feel enthusiastic about going back into parley. When he did, he dragged his feet a little – until he saw how the boardroom had changed.

The space had become covered in plant life. Vines snaked along the window frames and hung from the ceiling, but most of it was on the table. The colors of the different blossoms harmonized nicely, like someone with a bit of an eye for interior design had deliberately planted them there, and the fragrance was neither overbearing nor cloying. Towards John’s end of the table however, the vegetation got thicker and wilder, a riot of colors and scents. And there was not one flower there that Merle recognized, except…

There was a single red carnation tucked into the top-most buttonhole of John’s suit jacket. Somehow, out of all the plants there were in this room, Merle’s eyes always found their way back to that single red carnation.

“Did I… somehow do that?” Merle asked, somewhat dumbfounded.

John laughed, hiding it behind his hand. “No,” he said, “I redecorated a bit when I came in here. How do you like it?”

Merle figured that John entered the parley room about a second before he did. This redecorating had to have been done very quickly. He cleared his throat. “It’s nice.”

“I had hoped you’d like it.” John examined a large, purple blossom in front of him, his slender, elegant fingers almost caressing the soft, lightly furred petals. Merle licked his lips.

“So, I’d like to begin with my question today,” John said, seemingly absentmindedly toying with a vine.

Merle cleared his throat. “Sure.”

“I have… well, to be frank, as you probably well know I have newly acquired another plane, and I… hm.” John didn’t look up from the flower he was studying. “I now have within me a soul that knows the taste of you. How come?”

Merle was taken aback for a second, trying to make sense of this. Then he tried to pass it off with a shrug. “I’ve been fuckin’.”

“Obviously,” John drawled. He got out of his seat and came around to where Merle sat. “Get up on the table.”

Merle was reeling a little, distracted by John looming over him, really taking advantage of his superior height, by that look in John’s eyes that was somehow at once cold and heated. “Huh- what?”

“I said get up on the… oh, you know what?” Suddenly, John was grabbing him under his arms and hoisting him bodily upon the table. Merle gripped the edge of it in surprise and hastily tried to adjust his position so that he wasn’t crushing any flowers.

John reached over and caressed Merle’s cheek, lightly winding his fingers into Merle’s beard to join all the leaves and petals he’d wound into there.

“I never knew plants were such a… thing with you,” he said.

“Heh, yeah, well… you only know someone until you don’t.” Merle’s whole body wanted to squirm with impatience under John’s barely-there touch. Trepidation was warring with relief like a tug-o-war in his chest. He had really meant to give up on these parley trysts… the whole of it, the secrecy, the dubious morality of it, the feeling that he was playing with fire (even more than usual) whenever he interacted with John like this… it wasn’t exactly what he would call wholesome. But the relief was overpowering because John was touching him again. He hadn’t driven a wedge between them. They could still connect in this way and someday… maybe… if he played his cards right, if he was careful, if he didn’t drive John away… maybe one distant day, parley wouldn’t end in fire.

John withdrew his hand, gave Merle a calculating glance and, before Merle could complain about the lack of touching going on, dropped to his knees. Merle went bug-eyed with disbelief as John undid his pants, took a hold of his still only half-hard cock and put it, without further fanfare, into his mouth. He just kept it there, not moving as it grew hard in his warm, soft mouth and Merle was sweating, his thighs trembling in an effort not to shift. John put his hands on Merle’s thighs, his long, spindly fingers spanning them completely, and looked up into Merle’s eyes. He smiled around Merle’s cock and Merle could feel it, and he let out an embarrassingly loud moan that only caused John’s smile to widen. Merle grabbed a handful of John’s perfectly coiffed hair, messing it up in the process, to try to get him to move. If anything, John seemed to like that. He moaned against Merle’s dick, and the vibration of it made Merle utter some choice expletives.

John’s smile only widened as he swirled his tongue around Merle’s now fully hard cock, beginning to bob his head a little. He didn’t show any sign of gag reflex as Merle went deep, deep down his throat. Then he slid back up and almost off completely to lick some precum off the head, teasing it with his tongue. Merle squeezed his eyes shut and groaned deeply, spreading his hands out to steady himself, brushing against all these flowers John had put here for him.

On the next slide downwards, John added just a sliver of teeth, and while it felt electrifying how they scraped along the most sensitive nerves, Merle was breaking out into a cold sweat. This was what made sex with John so fucking unique, that commingling of relief and pleasure and danger that Merle found he was growing addicted to. Just like this whole parley business, he thought. Addictive. Sure, it wasn’t the smartest move. His family was worrying. It wasn’t even useful. But he couldn’t help himself. He kept diving back in. Coming back for more. More of this, more of this delicious friction, more of John.

_Don’t bite,_ he thought. _Don’t bite, don’t bite, god please don’t bite._

John moved off with a resounding pop as Merle’s dick slid out of his mouth. He wiped it with the back of his hand. “Why would I bite?”

Merle realized he’d probably been saying that out loud.

“You…” He shook his head. “Dunno. You eat stuff.”

It actually made John laugh. “Not like _this_.”

“Yeah, yeah. Can we get back to it?”

John sighed, grasped the base of Merle’s dick between his thumb and forefinger and eased it back down his throat. By now he was less unhurried, moving faster and almost eager to take Merle in as deeply as he could. He was growing just that tiny bit sloppier, drooling a little, quite obviously also getting off to this, if the way his free hand snuck down to dig his palm into his crotch was any indication. The other hand was exploring Merle’s balls and perineum, the light touches driving Merle crazy. He keened, almost a whine, he needed more, it was all building up and why wasn’t John giving him…?

He came suddenly, eruptively, and couldn’t draw back fast enough. The first spurts of cum went down John’s throat and he swallowed, and one white streak spattered across his face as John stuck his tongue out and attempted to catch what he could. Merle took himself in hand and gave himself a few rough strokes through it until, exhausted, he was starting to wind down.

He dropped his head on his chest, feeling like he could go for a nap now within all these soft, nice-smelling flowers, but John was still looking up at him adorned by his facial, eliciting a last, almost painful twitch from Merle’s utterly spent dick.

“Hey,” Merle said, catching his breath as John slowly and with quiet dignity started wiping his face and then licking the residue off the back of his hand. “Hey, come on up here. Your turn now.”

“I’m… good.” John cleared his throat. “I don’t have to have mine, I’m… today’s not about me.”

Merle eyed the sizeable erection straining the front of John’s dress pants. “What are you even talking about, come on up.”

John smiled, a self-important, smug smile. “I know the taste of you now. Firsthand, not just from a memory belonging to some other soul.”

Ah, Merle thought, of course. That was what it was about, the blowjob, the plants. Merle getting it on with an uninvolved third party had… struck something in John, and it looked awfully like jealousy. Not that Merle was about to point that out. He wasn’t raring to get burnt quite yet.

After just a little more prompting, John did get up on the table, because he was at his core a self-serving character. With his own urgency removed, Merle took his time to undress John deliberately and with care, one article of clothing at a time. John shifted a little, and in a huffy tone he said, “Didn’t you say you were going to get me off?”

“Didn’t you say you weren’t feelin’ like it?” Merle replied, carefully folding John’s suit jacket, putting it away and popping the first button on John’s shirt. He attached his mouth to the newly exposed skin right below John’s throat and suckled lightly.

“I’m – haah – starting to feel like it now, Merle.”

“This a good spot?” Merle asked, sucking a hickey into the little hollow space between John’s clavicles. Now he was the one who suddenly felt a hand grabbing a fistful of his hair.

“Very good, yes, but let’s move it along, okay?” John’s voice hitched on the last word as Merle dragged his tongue slowly downwards while his hands worked on undoing more buttons.

“Actually, you know what?” Merle said, putting a hand on John’s now bare chest and pushing him lightly downwards. “I wanna have you down here.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah, look, you’ve got us all these flowers and we haven’t even used ‘em, really.” Laid out amidst the flora, John was a sight to behold. Like something from a painting. Merle felt his dick twitch in a futile effort; if he hadn’t just come a literal five minutes prior, he was sure that just looking at John like this would get him hard again.

He picked up a flower by the stem, a beautiful red one he wasn’t familiar with, and skimmed it lightly over John’s exposed chest. A part of him wanted to scoop up an armful of flowers and just cover John in them, make it something of an artwork. For now, seeing as John was showing traces of impatience, he contented himself with reaching down and palming the bulge in John’s pants.

John gave him a pretty moan and arched up gratefully, trying to rub against Merle’s hand for more friction. Merle had no ambition to keep him waiting any longer; even though he would’ve loved to take more time to study John thoroughly, to map John’s body with his hands and his tongue, there simply was no trying John’s patience like that. There still was that element to this, the difference between getting each other off and making love.

Love…? Even as he undid John’s belt and opened his pants as John’s pretty, performative moans turned into genuine, higher-pitched noises of desperation, everything in Merle shied away from the mere mention of the word.

He closed a hand around John’s now unclothed cock and took up a steady pace of stroking. He neither slowed nor picked up his speed throughout, which seemed to drive John crazier than if he had. He rocked his hips to meet Merle on his every downstroke, rutting into his hand and spitting curses, desperate for a faster pace. Merle didn’t care, he kept his hand steady, letting John do most of the work. John came letting out an indescribable, broken noise and leaving a splash of Hunger colors all over Merle’s hand. Merle licked a bit off his fingers (causing John to groan and run a tired hand over his eyes) and wiped the rest on John’s thigh.

Merle nestled down among the flowers and just relished every moment that went by without John killing him. They were done here, they were finished, and there was no trace yet of the black flame. Maybe Merle would be permitted today to take this one step further…

He reached out and touched John, ran a hand up John’s skinny arm and down his torso, his fingertips brushing pronounced ribs. John only smiled, an indulgent sort of smile, as Merle’s hand came to rest above his hipbone.

_Not an ounce of fat on him,_ Merle thought. _Here he’s been, scarfing down entire worlds nonstop for fuck knows how long, but does it show? Nah, course it doesn’t. One decent meal ahead of starvation, by the looks of him._

“I don’t know any of these,” he said aloud, indicating the plants.

“They’re from way before… we got acquainted?” John replied. “I thought this through. If I’d picked any flowers from…” He caught himself in time and amended, “…flowers you were familiar with, it would’ve… not set the intended tone.”

Merle nodded. That made sense; if Merle had come in to a room full of flowers from his home plane, or any of the planes they’d lost, it would’ve put him in a… different mood.

For a while, they were silent.

Eventually, John murmured Merle’s name and reached out in turn, shifting on his bed of non-roses. His fingers traced the contours of Merle’s face first, then trailed down lower. It was perhaps a natural next step of what they’d been doing ever since they’d started parley: learning each other, getting to know who this mysterious Other was, inside and out, in every way. With their words, with their hands.

They didn’t speak now, just went on touching each other in a silent understanding. Merle had come to think of John as just a man, someone he talked to sometimes and also, lately, had sex with. But as John touched him now, in this rare, quiet, unhurried moment, he thought he could feel the thrum of John’s multitudes in his fingertips, under his skin like a pulse. He thought he could feel the Hunger in the way John reached for him, taste it when he sucked John’s fingers into his mouth. He tasted stardust, the empty cold of outer space, and just the barest hint, perhaps, of the ceaseless, endless striving of that horrid gestalt, the avatar of which had just sucked his dick.

It was silent, almost peaceful, and it smelled of flowers but no, there was nothing holy about this little moment. It was deeply, thoroughly profane.

And Merle didn’t care enough to stop it here.

“Hey, Merle?” John asked.

“Mmmh?”

“Are you getting hard again?”

Sparks travelled up Merle’s spine as John brushed his fingers against his cock, which was indeed stirring again. John chuckled, almost in delight at this turn of events.

“Round two, then, huh?”

Merle couldn’t agree more.

 

* * *

 

“You were at it for a pretty long time,” Davenport said.

“Yeah, it took you like, forever to die this time!” Magnus threw in. “We had your little ghosty thing sitting here for ages. What _were_ you up to?”

Merle released a long exhale. He was always a bit disoriented after parley for a moment, but this time especially so. He was bone-tired. All he wanted to do was sleep.

“We broke the conference table,” he muttered.

Lucretia looked up at him from where she was seated on the floor with her journal open, her pen hovering above the pages. “Come again?”

“Yeah, we broke the fucking conference table,” Merle repeated.

That had been round three. John had called off the parley once they and all the flowers had taken an unceremonious tumble.

Good god, he was getting too old for this.

“What the hell did you do?” Magnus asked.

Merle rubbed his arms and didn’t look directly at him. He knew that at the beginning of each new cycle, his body was reset to the condition it had been in when they’d started the mission. Still, some part of him was convinced that surely everyone could see what he had gotten up to. Surely they could smell John’s scent on his body, surely they could somehow deduce this.

“It sort of… gets emotional in there sometimes,” he said.

“Did he do anything to hurt you?” Lucretia asked, concerned and caring.

Merle sheepishly thought back to all the ways John had touched him, none of them causing him any pain or discomfort whatsoever, quite the opposite. God, and here Lucretia was, getting worried about him. He was such a prick.

“Not… well, he did kill me at the end there, but apart from that, no.”

“Right, okay, but if he ever does…”

“Listen.” Davenport cleared his throat. “I can only imagine what an… emotionally fraught situation it must be, having to converse with that… creature. I realize it must be frustrating, but Merle, I think I speak for everyone here when I say, we all know that if anyone can handle that, it’s you. You might sometimes want to let your emotions get the better of you, I know, we’ve all been there, but Merle…”

“It’s okay, Dav. I’m good.”

“Just someday he might let something slip that may prove vital to this mission. You’ll never know when it might be. If you can… by all means, take a break, take all the breaks you need. But if you can try keeping at it, I…”

“Sure, I’ll keep at it, it’s all good. Really it is. I’ll have a nap and go right back, how’s that?”

Davenport, reticent at the best of times, leaned in and gave Merle a brief hug. “Thank you,” he said. “I know you’re… we’re all aware that you’re sacrificing a lot here.”

_Yikes_ , Merle thought.

“So,” Davenport continued. “What did you find out? Let’s put that down quickly so that we can all rest.”

Oh shit.

Merle suddenly remembered – he’d forgotten to do the questions.

 

* * *

 

He didn’t want to spend a lot of time dwelling on that embarrassment. About two weeks into the new cycle, he went back to parley, back into the arms of a world-devouring force. Not that John had devoured anything last year – Merle had learned as much while he had stuck around his family. The most recent plane had gotten away, and when he’d set out, they’d been in high hopes of saving this one too. Barry had spotted the Light pretty quickly, and when Merle had split from the group, they’d just been planning their next expedition to retrieve it. John didn’t seem at all perturbed at having lost another plane, or maybe he was just pretty good at not showing his feelings on the matter. When Merle asked him about it, John cut him off with a kiss, straddled his lap and opened his pants.

“You know, they’re gonna get it this time too,” Merle told him, and John sighed into his mouth.

“We’re going to have to live with that,” he said and stuck his hand down Merle’s pants.

“You’ll be good two years in a row? Only because I remember you saying…”

“We can make do,” John said and ran his thumb over the head of Merle’s cock, making him inhale sharply.

An obvious distraction.

Merle didn’t care.

He tipped his head back, closed his eyes and let John attend to him.

 

* * *

 

Outside of the parley space, the eternal battle for the Light went on. Sometimes the IPRE crew got to it first, sometimes the Hunger did. Lately, fate had smiled upon the Starblaster. When they got away with their third Light in a row, everyone was jubilant. Three planes saved – it was fantastic. They probably couldn’t keep that winning streak up forever, but every plane rescued was already infinitely valuable. Besides, it was nice to have these occasional sweet, morale-boosting moments of triumph when it looked like they could do anything.

But even with the added spice to the parleys, they were becoming a chore to Merle. He had hoped to hold John’s attention in this way for a good long while, but from parley to parley John seemed to become more listless and irritable. Their comfortable little routine of chess and conversation had totally broken down. John still took his own victories with nothing but a grim smile, but he now got downright insufferable when he either lost a game or began suspecting Merle of letting him win. These days, he was just as likely as anything to end a game by flicking Merle’s king off the board, pushing the whole board aside and straddling Merle’s lap. Maybe the novelty had worn off the whole thing.

Yet, chore or no, Merle kept going back as early in the year as he could possibly justify to his family, as if compelled to. He couldn’t not go. He had to see John, he had to touch and hold and fuck John. Without him, he felt deprived, and kept thinking of him all the time, like an addict craving his fix. Maybe he and John had some things in common.

The sex as such now had a weird, driven urgency to it on John’s side that was majorly messing with Merle’s zen, and there were no more nice, quiet moments afterwards. They finished and Merle was set ablaze no five minutes later. After Merle had blown his question of the day to ask John what was wrong, and John had snapped “I’d prefer not to answer that” and set Merle on fire, he realized he needed a more thorough plan of attack than that.

So for the next parley, he made an effort. He put on the jean shorts that made Taako retch whenever he saw them, the ones that made his butt look so right. He braided flowers into his beard and tucked a large one behind his ear. He even pinched a bit of Davenport’s cologne. And then, once they’d started parley, he grabbed John’s tie, used it to tie his hands together, and told him to sit back and enjoy.

He proceeded to strip John, quickly and efficiently, and then, once he had him naked, to lavish worship unto every part of his body.

He started at the ankles (feet were gross), placing a kiss there and moving upwards. Soon he was kissing and nibbling and leaving hickeys on John’s thighs and John, was issuing demands for Merle to move on to where his cock was already leaking black fluid onto his abdomen. Which was good. Every year it seemed to take a little longer to get John going, but they were definitely there now.

Merle remained unbothered by John moving on to blatant threats now. He licked up the bead of precum and again relished the unique taste as well as the way John writhed, unsatisfied by the very mild attention to his cock and yearning for more. Merle didn’t stay there. He moved on to suck at the skin above John’s left hipbone, internally rejoicing at the full-body jerk and the sudden noise he got from John. Evidently he’d hit on a hot spot. He applied himself to seeking out more.

He found something right below John’s ribcage, above his collarbone, behind his ear (this one almost made John _squeal_ ), the pulse point at his wrist and the one below his throat that he had already discovered. His hands and lips and tongue and teeth were all over these for the following hour, sparing John’s nipples and his cock for now, until he had John half-undone and panting, struggling to undo the tie that kept his hands pinned behind him – but not struggling too hard, Merle noted.

He finally lowered himself to mouth at the head of John’s cock, and John moaned out loud, long and deep and satisfied in the belief that finally he’d get seen to. Merle left him in that belief for a hot moment, flattening his tongue and sliding it down the thick nerve on the underside of John’s length.

John sighed in something almost like bliss. “Oh, gods above, Merle…”

Merle withdrew, popping John’s dick out of his mouth.

“Thought you didn’t like the gods.”

John groaned and rolled his eyes towards the ceiling. “It’s a figure of speech, Merle, just go on.”

Merle smiled and shook his head. He reached up and pinched one of John’s nipples – the right one – causing John to twitch and make a soft noise somewhere between a moan and a sigh.

“Is that good?” Merle asked.

“Yes, but…”

“Okay.” Merle now attached his mouth to that nipple, sucking lightly, grazing it with his teeth. He kept that up – switching between the both of them – for a while, until John had gone from pretty, restrained, occasional moans to high keening noises. He was squirming a lot now, trying to get his hands free, trying to get at his cock or, possibly, kill Merle. Merle straddled his legs, putting a stop to that. Occasionally, he bent down and lightly fingered John’s cock or balls or sometimes kissed the head of it, cleaning up all precum with his tongue. For moments at a time, he gave John the most precious of all treasures, which was hope, only to then withdraw and go after all of John’s most sensitive spots again, keeping him riled up and increasingly desperate.

It was a delicate game; if he took it too far, John might just decide that he’d had enough of the whole back-and-forth and simply blast Merle with fire yet another time. So Merle started giving him some more. He took John’s whole dick into his mouth, kept it there longer and sucked it in earnest, until he could feel that John was getting close… then he withdrew again and blew a stream of cold air onto the sensitized skin.

Three times he brought John back from the brink of orgasm until he had him snarling, teeth bared and just short of begging for release.

“Merle, come on,” John breathed, his chest heaving, his breath hitching on each feather-light touch that Merle applied to his painfully furled testicles. His cock was flushed and radiating heat; it bobbed as John strained towards Merle’s touch, a futile and utterly human gesture.

“ _Merle_ ,” John repeated, his voice taking on a wheedling tone. “ _Please_. Don’t _you_ want to get off?”

In truth, Merle had been so wrapped up in the proceedings that he hadn’t paid any mind to himself. Now that John mentioned it, it was like a spell had been broken, and he suddenly realized how absolutely rock-hard he was, straining in his shorts.

“Later,” he said gruffly.

“There won’t be a _later_ if you keep on like this!”

“Makin’ way too much sense there, Johnny.” He couldn’t allow this level of coherency to continue further. He drew a fingernail very lightly along that nerve on the underside of John’s dick, and John threw his head back and _screamed._ He screamed in a thousand – in a million – in a trillion voices, and Merle was sure that wherever it currently was, the whole Hunger had just trembled.

“Merle!” John cried out. Tears were pooling in his eyes from the strain alone. “Why are you… oh, I… please, just…”

“Just tryna see something, just a bit longer,” Merle said, trying for soothing. He kept on brushing his fingertips up and down John’s cock, enough to make sparks travel throughout John’s body, not enough to come. “Just hold on.”

“I’ve had it with you!” John sobbed, hips arching up to get more of Merle’s touches, in vain. “You and your… unghhhh… always keeping from me, always… oh, gods, I need to…”

“You can come,” Merle promised. “It’ll be over soon, just one thing. Just one thing you’ve gotta say.”

“Yes… what…”

“What’s been going wrong with you these past few years?”

John groaned. “Gods damn you, Merle, the Light, the fucking Light, now please…!”

“What about the Light? You haven’t had it for a while, is that it?”

“Oh… so… empty. Need it.”

“Need what? The Light, or to get your nut on?”

John shot him a look of pure, dark hatred. “Fuck you. _Fuck you.”_

“Seems a bit harsh,” Merle said calmly and deep-throated him.

John came seconds later, searing bursts down Merle’s throat. Merle kept sucking him throughout it and kept John’s cock in his mouth until it was starting to soften and John was trying to push away. After they separated, John remained slumped and motionless in his chair for a good long while in almost dreadful silence.

“ _Well_ ,” he said then, his voice still raspy. “That didn’t help.”

“With what?” Merle asked. His own erection had still not been tended to and demanded his attention, but there were more important things right now. Namely, the deep shit he was now in with John after that little stunt.

John shut his eyes and ran a lethargic hand through his sweat-damp hair. “The Light,” he muttered. “Can’t you and your people sort of… let one slip? It’s really… it’s what me and mine subsist on, you know that.”

_Oh,_ Merle thought. Some things were coming together. John’s listlessness and tendency to snap at everything Merle said, his greater-than-usual apathy and half a dozen other little tells now formed a complete picture, and not a pretty one. The Hunger hadn’t had the Light in years, and John was its avatar, reflecting its moods and broadcasting its needs. It was harder to tell with John, whose body was a static entity and showed no change, but Merle _was_ a healer. Not a particularly gifted one, but a healer nonetheless. He knew onset starvation when he saw it.

“I… okay,” he said. “We can’t really let one slip, no. That’s… you’ve got my, ah, my sympathy for your whole… situation here, but it’s really not gonna happen.”

“Why? You people aren’t even doing anything with it. We need it.”

Merle didn’t like taking advantage of this rare unguarded state of John’s. Still he said, “We’re not really keeping it for us. It’s more, y’know, in the interest of these planes we get to every other year.”

“It’s not like anyone _dies_ when they get added to my being,” John almost whined. “And it’s not forever. It’s going to pay off in the end, for everyone. Merle, you must see this.”

Merle shook his head. “Okay, so they don’t die. Good, that’s good. But it’s still… holy fuck, you’re still snatching up all these people. What happens to them? Is it those scout thingies Taako keeps seeing when he casts Blink? Were they people?”

John looked deeply tired. “I’m not in a mood or state to have that whole discussion,” he said and waved his hand. Black fire appeared, as it had so many times before. “See you next year.”

Merle’s last thought was that at least he now had an interesting tidbit to bring home to the family.

 

* * *

 

“So everyone’s still in there,” Davenport summarized. “Our home plane and… everything else he consumed.”

“Greg Grimaldis,” Lup whispered dramatically.

“Yeah, get that money, babe, but we’re actually doing it?” Barry asked. “We’re actually starving him out?”

“It’s gettin’ noticeable that we’re doing that, yeah.” Merle shrugged. “If we keep that up, who knows what might happen.”

“Maybe ask him next year,” Barry suggested.

“If the Hunger’s losing mass…” Lup mused, “is that people? Is that people and planes and stuff that are in there that are now… disappearing? Do they die? Where do they go?”

“Aw, shit, I don’t know,” Merle said. “I know what he told me, and that wasn’t much.”

“Yeah, you don’t say,” Taako butted in from where he was perched on a table. “Anyway, I think we should totally go on doing what we’re doing. We keep this up, the whole thing might just… fall apart.”

Merle nodded along with everyone else, but he wasn’t too happy about it. Of course, it had to be done this way. Weighing John’s life against the existence of countless worlds and their populations – there shouldn’t even be a question there, and to the others, there wasn’t. But, everything be damned, Merle was… fond of John. It came naturally with fucking someone numerous times, but he suspected that he’d take too much of a liking to John even if their relationship had remained entirely platonic. Ideally, he wanted to come out of this situation with _everyone_ saved, John very much included.

But this wasn’t an ideal world and sooner or later, Merle would have to cope with… a loss.

 

* * *

 

He got back into parley in an apprehensive mood, not knowing, after last time, what would await him. John had given him a lot. He’d let his guard down too far. Merle had wanted information and he had risked too much to get it. Best case, John would be building his walls back up. Worst case, Merle had ruined everything.

It was John’s fourth consecutive year without the Light.

Merle found John waiting in his usual seat, as still and composed as an obsidian statue. He had his legs crossed, his hands folded in his lap, the orange light of the setting sun illuminating his unmoving features. There was a cold, inhuman elegance to him that in the beginning of the parleys, he had lacked. Merle remembered the first time well. Oh, sure, John had been scary, so unexpected and unsettling and uncaring in his sudden violence. But he had also been out of his depth and it had shown. The way he hadn’t at first been able to speak. The way his conversation had come in odd patches later, the way he’d inhabited his body and this physical space awkward and marked by disuse.

By now, John had familiarized himself enough with the parley room to make it his own. He was again assured of his physical form and its capabilities and able to carry himself with unique poise. And god, was he sexy.

“Ah, Merle,” John said. “And so admirably quick, too. I’ve been waiting.”

“Uh, yeah. Hi. Um. About what happened…”

“Yes. You know considerably more now than I feel comfortable with. Still…” For a second, John’s gaze drifted off into the middle distance.

“Well, there’s no way to change that,” he concluded at last.

“I guess not.” Merle slid into his seat. “So how, um… how’re ya feelin’?”

John fixed him with a steady gaze. His irises were pure black. “Hungry,” he said. “There’s no use denying that now.”

Merle cleared his throat. “I’m… sorry to hear.”

“Not sorry enough to do something about it, I suppose.” John sighed and let his restive glare sweep aimlessly across the room. “Well, doesn’t matter. We’ll have to see who comes out on top of our little race, as always. For now… I’ve got you right here.”

John traced a finger across his lips and Merle full-body shuddered. For a short, nonsensical moment, he fully expected John to devour him whole.

Then suddenly John was towering above him, undoing his tie and binding Merle’s hands with it, as Merle had done to him before.

“Turnabout’s fair play,” he said. His dark eyes glittered. “Oh, Merle, what _am_ I supposed to do with you?”

 

* * *

 

Merle woke with a start, flinching upright the minute his eyes snapped open. His whole body seemed to clamor in protest of the sudden motion.

He felt heavy, and sticky, and sore.

He was _covered_ in bite marks and they throbbed, each one a little pain. John had gotten especially into nibbling today.

“You’re up,” John said from somewhere to his left. “I untied your hands for now. Can’t be comfortable sleeping like that.”

Merle groaned. His throat felt dry as the desert. “How long…?”

“I don’t know. I don’t acknowledge time like you do. Water?”

A glass of water was pushed into Merle’s field of vision and he took it. His wrists ached a bit where the ties had chafed.

“How many times…?”

John shrugged. “Seems like we both lost count.”

“Fuck.” Apart from… everything else, Merle had to admit he was impressed. Pan only knew how long he’d been here, at John’s mercy. Sure, it was only his hands that were tied. Sure, he could get out of this chair at any time. John would end the parley and they’d go their merry ways, but…

God, was it hot how John rode him. Fucking himself on Merle’s cock. Barely giving him time to recuperate. He’d come… a number of times before finally blacking out. Honestly, he’d expected to wake up on the ship.

“You haven’t killed me yet,” he said.

“No.” John also hadn’t put _any_ clothes on. Merle privately enjoyed the rare moment of leisure he could utilize to really study John’s lithe, almost lanky frame. Middle age showed on him, but he carried it well. _What’s that called? A silver weasel. No, wait. Some other critter._

The way John eyed him now, his tongue darting out to lick his lips…

Realization dawned on Merle. “You’re not finished with me yet.”

“No,” John purred, “not yet. You can go again now, can’t you.” It wasn’t a question.

“I’ve already… gone a couple times, I’m not sure, at my age and stuff, how much more I can do here.”

“Oh, you’re not nearly depleted yet. I’ll send you back when you are, of course.” Merle licked his own lips in turn under John’s frankly ravenous gaze. “You must understand,” John said, taking Merle’s cock in hand and stroking it slowly, almost gently. “I am so-o starved.”

Merle groaned. Could someone’s dick get sore? The skin felt hypersensitive. He’d been within John so much already. And yet, when he reached out, it wasn’t to push John away. Instead, he pulled him closer, one hand at John’s waist, one grasping him at the scruff of the neck like a kitten. John immediately crept into Merle’s lap, his long, angular body just slotting into there like it was made for it. Merle could feel himself getting hard again. He moaned into John’s mouth as John kissed him, deeply, desperately, voraciously.

It was too much. It was just right.

“All these other souls I’m tethered to,” John muttered as their lips separated. “I can feel them getting frenzied now with need for what we lack. It’s… o-ooh, it’s affecting me as well. You won’t give me the Light, I know, I know. But you…” With a few easy, practiced motions, he pushed himself down on Merle’s cock. He was still loose and slick from before; they didn’t need to waste time on preparations.

“Ah, shit. Johnny.”

“You can fill me like this.”

“Mmhh.”

“Least you can do. Ahh, it’s not enough. Need more. Fuck… f-fuck me.”

“Johnny, I…”

“Yes, mmh.” John’s head was tipped back, his eyes half-closed. He was looking to lose himself completely in this, chasing a kind of satiation that Merle couldn’t fully give him. “If I could… I’d take you wholly into me, just… just all of you, it might help, for a bit.”

“Gah.” Merle let out an inarticulate noise because by god, that shouldn’t be hot.

He emptied his load into John another time, and John got off him when he pushed. By now they were both so sticky that he almost slid off without meaning to. Merle sank back into his seat, gasping for breath. He felt utterly spent.

John didn’t stay quiet for long. He drew urgent, questing fingers through the mess of cum in various colorations and states of drying that covered Merle’s thighs. Merle had never felt this nasty in his life.

“When can you go again?” John whispered.

Was this limbo? Was this heaven?

“Oh, come the fuck on,” Merle said.

John licked a stripe up Merle’s thigh. When he was done with that, he said, “On my home plane, some artistically-minded people have called climax the little death. Now, literally dying in that way seems a bit far-fetched, but…”

“You’re gonna try your fucking damndest to make it happen anyway?”

John smiled at him, smeared lips and that disturbing, never-to-be-sated hunger in his eyes. “Burning is so uncouth, don’t you think?”

 

* * *

 

Merle went straight to bed after that parley, and he stayed there for two entire days. The exhaustion had carried over into the new cycle. No one bothered him much about it, as the crew were all a little down after their winning streak of four had been broken. Oh, yes, John had gotten the most recent Light. Of course Merle was sad and horrified to see another plane go, but on the other hand… what he had just been party to in that last parley, he couldn’t possibly do that again. He was really getting too old for this.

As often, he headed back there filled with a sense of apprehension. He never knew what to expect with John, how their encounters would change their already precarious relationship. Things tended to work out okay for the most part, but some small part of Merle still dreaded the day when he’d fuck it all up somehow, when he’d overstep some boundary or say something that would shut down any chance of a possible peace forever.

He knew that by now, years and years into the parleys, no one else on the Starblaster seriously believed that peace was at all viable. But Merle had to keep on trying. He owed it to all these planes, to his family, to himself. To John.

John seemed a lot calmer than previously as he greeted Merle and waved him over to his usual seat with a sincere, relaxed smile. Once again, Merle didn’t quite know how to start here. Beginnings were often awkward things.

“So, um… how ya doin‘?” he asked.

“Much better, obviously, thank you.” As always, John wasn’t as subtle as to pick up on the fact that the loss of one more plane had been a tragedy for Merle’s side. He didn’t acknowledge these things. Whatever didn’t fit into his worldview was ignored. He’d gotten the Light, so he was content. For all his complexities, sometimes John seemed very simple.

“As for our last… meeting, if there’s anything we need to… discuss,” John then added, something almost like slight concern clouding his handsome features. Merle, surprised by that relative show of consideration, waved it off.

“It’s all good,” he said, “but hey, um… why don’t we take it a bit slower, um, today.”

“Of course!” John readily agreed. “I feel like we haven’t had a decent chess game in a while.”

Merle nodded. His relief had to be palpable.

 

* * *

 

In the years that followed, he got to know John thoroughly. It would be far too much to say that John opened up to him like a flower, but he did learn a thing or two. He got to know John in the afterglow, his lazy, post-climax inertia. He got to know John after hours of foreplay. He learned to distinguish John when he was going hungry from John when he had recently fed, and how these two states of being influenced the sex they had. Merle hated even thinking that but by Pan, it was so much better when John didn’t pounce on him like a starved wolf. When he didn’t feel like he was a placebo for what John really needed.

When John was content, his ravening multitudes glutted and mollified by another Light and the addition of another plane, things were much more… easy. Relaxed. Cordial. John’s touches could be gentle then, almost adoring, when they wanted nothing from each other but to while away a few hours and some increasingly insignificant intel. But in the world outside of parley, it was getting harder to compartmentalize _this_.

Sure, Merle was usually a master at just sort of not thinking too hard about anything that threatened to worsen his mood. But it was a downer that he could talk to no one about all of this. It was objectively horrible that Merle could grieve the loss of yet another plane and still look forward to meeting with and sticking his dick in the being causing all of this. Sure, resolving this eternal stalemate and winning John over was still a goal he had in mind. But he didn’t go into parley with an elaborate master plan always at the forefront of his thoughts. He went because John was good company, a good fuck, and he cared for him.

Precisely to avoid thinking about it too hard, he started going into parley earlier and earlier in the year, no matter what the outcome of the last year had been. It was helping, but he was also enjoying himself, so really what was the harm?, he rationalized. Planes were going by in a blur. The cycles passed.

One day within the span of time that Merle had begun to think of as in between parleys, Davenport approached him.

“I need to talk to you about the plants,” he said.

“The plants?” Merle repeated, eyebrows rising. Usually Davenport left matters of biology entirely to him.

“Yeah, you know how I’ve been watering your plants for you when you were gone?”

“You were? Aw shucks, Dav, that’s so nice of you.”

Davenport scratched his head, looking a bit sheepish. “Yeah, well, the thing is… I’ve been having some trouble there, actually. Like I don’t know which plants need how much water, not to even mention fertilizer and all that stuff… I looked in the ship’s database but most of these plants are from… ah, from planes we lost, so there’s no data. And I swear this might sound silly but…” He let out a little laugh. “The plants aren’t reacting to me like they react to you. It’s like they… miss you. Must be the Pan thing, and of course you’re the specialist.”

Merle smiled jovially. “Yeah, I’m kinda the plant guy on this ship, so…”

“That blue fern you got five cycles ago, it’s… looking sort of poorly, actually. I’m sorry. Maybe you could take a day or so to check in on that before… you know, before you head off again?”

Merle was already up to his elbows in soil when he caught on to what Davenport really wanted. The fern had really only been overwatered a bit, but this wasn’t about the fern. It was about the family.

This cycle, he stayed around until the end of the year, and the plants on the Starblaster flourished. On the same cycle, Magnus got sick, and it took Merle several weeks to heal him.

“How did you guys manage when I was away?” he asked, and had to hear that mostly they’d just died.

He moved parley back to the end of the year, no matter how much John complained about waiting, no matter how much he came to… miss John.

With that, now, the dreams came back. Even when he didn’t physically spend time with him, John would sneak his way into Merle’s subconscious and haunt him there almost every night.

_“Feed me, Merle,”_ Dream John would say in a sultry voice that Real John would probably rather die than employ. _“Feed me the Light…”_

Merle would be holding the Light of Creation, and from somewhere behind him would come the tinny, far-off voices of his shipmates.

_“Don’t do it, Merle!”_ they’d cry. _“Remember what we’re here for, Merle. If you do this, an entire plane is going to get destroyed!”_

_“Don’t listen to them, Merle,”_ the specter of John would entice. _“You don’t want me to waste away, do you? You want to keep me fed. You want us to have fun together… don’t you?”_

And Merle would dither, and he would sweat, and he would wake up sweaty and with a very weird boner he’d take care of in the shower. He didn’t like this one bit.

He didn’t discuss these dreams with John. He didn’t think John would love hearing them. Sure, John was into philosophy, but what with his sizeable ego, he probably wouldn’t appreciate being someone else’s weirdly sexual trolley problem.

That Merle was putting the parleys off until later had a strange effect on John. He alternated between being increasingly free with his touches and little signs of affection and being strangely skittish and refusing to talk about anything concerning himself. Merle suspected they were hurtling towards… something, some sort of confrontation or conclusion, and he didn’t know how to forestall it. Sometimes, when he thought about it, he was certain that it would be sensible to just let it happen. But most of the time he dreaded changes to the status quo and he dreaded whatever was brewing in John’s mind. Every time they made love, he found himself holding John a little closer, and yet somehow he felt like in some intangible way, John was slipping from him.

 

* * *

 

“Hey, Merle?” John asked.

They were lying together after Merle had just spent some time and energy very nicely nailing John into the shag carpet. After all these years, Merle mused, there was nary an inch of the parley room that they hadn’t fucked in.

“Yeah?” he asked, too lazy to turn around and face John. Just this once, Merle was the little spoon. He groaned in protest when John let go of him and sat up.

“Why are you doing this?”

“Why am I doing what?”

“All of it,” John said.

“You mean, why do I come here? You know that my people back on the ship want—”

John sighed. “Not that, I know that. Do they also want us to sleep together? I didn’t get that impression, but…” John trailed off and Merle sat up also. Well, here it was. Or at least, here was… something. Maybe this was the moment he had awaited and dreaded. But maybe he could save it.

“They still don’t know about it,” he admitted, “but what’s that to you?”

“Nothing,” John said. “I’m just trying to find reasons here for what you’ve been doing and how you’ve been acting. I mean, what’s the agenda here?”

Merle shrugged. “Maybe there is none. You know me, I’m a simple guy.”

John shook his head. “Don’t sell yourself short.” He then seemed to catch himself, surprised at his own words. “Merle, you… how do I say this?”

Merle also had no words to say. He just looked at John, his heart hammering in his chest.

“If you’ve been doing this with me…” John gestured between them in their state of undress, “…to further some kind of agenda then it’s not working. And it won’t ever work.”

_Aw, rats._

Disappointment tasted bitter, and Merle wasn’t used to it. What had he expected John to say?

“Maybe there’s no grand plan here, Johnny boy,” he tried. “I do stuff because it feels good. This is pretty nice so far. Except for the part where you kill my ass, heh.”

“I will have to keep killing your formidable ass, Merle, I’m afraid.” John shook his head in something almost like apology. “But listen, we promised each other we’d be honest in here. You were aiming to… what, win me over, was that it? You imagined I’d grow so fond of this that I’d abandon my cause for more of it.”

“It is sort of a clunky arrangement, us meeting once a year like this,” Merle said. “But nah, I wasn’t thinking all that.” _But you were,_ he thought _. You’ve been thinking about it, and that makes you feel threatened._ _You actually thought, even just for a moment, of trading it all in, and now it’s sorta freaking you out._ It was a bit of a compliment to Merle’s bedroom skills. He’d appreciate it a lot more if not for the unfortunate implications of John confronting him like this.

“Honesty, Merle,” John reminded. “Look, you don’t have to say it. It’s fine. But listen, giving up was never an option.” He looked around the parley room, gesturing broadly at nothing, indicating the Hunger, his whole existence, his bizarre mission. “I’ve come so far. I will keep going. I’m… sorry, I guess, to be taking this hope from you, but I won’t be tempted.”

Merle swallowed and tried to smile around the lump in his throat. “Well, back to the drawing board, then.”

“I think we should stop doing this,” John said. If he had fidgeted or avoided Merle’s eyes or shown any sign of dejection, of resignation, of this being hard on him, Merle could have taken it. But John looked at him, clear-eyed and certain and devoid of regrets and that made it almost unbearable.

“You mean… you don’t wanna meet anymore?” Merle asked. He could already see himself reporting this to Lucretia. No more parleys. Sorry, folks, I fucked up, and wait until you hear how it happened.

But John blinked and even flinched a little, apparently almost startled by the proposition. “Oh, no, we can still meet! That is, if you’ll even want that anymore. Just, I think it would be best to keep it platonic from here on out.”

Merle sighed, rubbing his forehead. He suddenly felt very tired. “Sure,” he said. “It’s your call.”

John looked a bit surprised at Merle folding so quickly. “Really?”

“Of course,” Merle said. “We won’t do anything here that you don’t wanna do.”

 

* * *

 

So they kept meeting, but that parley was one of the last. It wasn’t that things were awkward between them now. But when Merle sat in his accustomed seat as always, playing chess or talking, it felt like something glaringly obvious was missing from the whole scene. That he didn’t have the ability anymore to reach out and touch John, to take his hand or muss up his hair or pull him in for a kiss was disconcerting to say the least, like a skill he’d once had and then forgotten, like a phantom limb. Merle constantly wondered if John regretted restraining himself like that. He didn’t let on but sometimes, in a passing moment, Merle thought he could see a fraction of all the pining he was doing reflected back at him in John’s eyes. He held on to the hope that the whole thing was not yet lost, that he could still convince John to reconsider his actions through friendly conversation alone. But there was a dawning fear in the back of his mind that that ship had sailed, and it was getting harder and harder to ignore.

So when John launched into a nihilist rant to end them all, when he wholly and completely rejected Merle’s entire philosophy, when after all they’d done he wouldn’t even admit that they were _friends_ , when Merle saw clearly that this was a lost cause, it was almost a relief. There was nothing he could do here, there was nothing John would permit him to do.

It allowed him to step off.

“Huh. I feel sad.”

That somber admission to end a stormy relationship of decades kept resounding in Merle’s mind for a while afterwards.

 

* * *

 

And then it was thirty years later, and John had been aching.

He thought he’d known starvation. He thought he’d known hunger.

He’d known nothing.

Now the scouts had found traces of the Light, strange and fractured but _there_ nonetheless, and they’d also… found Merle.

Merle hadn’t been there for all the starving years. The little silver ship had vanished at one point, and Merle and the Light had vanished with it. Through these ten hellish years, John hadn’t even had Merle to provide relief.

He missed Merle with each painful breath. At first, he was almost relieved that Merle was leaving him alone, but the relief didn’t last for long. It was their debates that he found himself missing most, the distraction and the stimulation Merle provided, even though his worldview was frankly inane. As the Light disappeared and the Hunger (he’d taken to calling it that to himself, protest as he might that it was a ridiculous name) grew frenzied once more with the need for it, he began reminiscing on the more carnal side of his relationship with Merle. How when Merle’s cock was in him, he had felt, if even for a moment, something almost like satiation and contentment. Of course that had had an inherent danger to it. John couldn’t allow himself to grow soft. There was still the cause that had brought them all together, and Merle had almost distracted him from that. John couldn’t afford distractions.

But when the Hunger, his hellish children, turned on him for his failure to locate the Light, as they began to shred him apart in their endless, feral frenzy, as he had to rally his will to keep from being submerged, as he faced the fact of his utter and total failure, John only wished he could put his head on Merle’s shoulder, close his eyes, breathe in Merle’s earthy scent and rest.

And then they found the Light again, and they found Merle.

John at that point was barely holding it together. He knew he didn’t have a lot of time left. But the Hunger… the Hunger couldn’t get Merle. Being absorbed would spare his life, John knew that. But he also knew that Merle would hate subsisting in the state that all the trillions of souls that made up the Hunger were in. John placed no value in such things, but he knew that Merle cherished his life as an individual entity, with sunlight and flowers and friends and all that jazz. After everything that had occurred, John couldn’t bear the thought of this being taken away from Merle.

So the Hunger simply had to go.

John didn’t have the power anymore to dissolve the bonds that held his accursed creation together. But maybe someone else, someone from outside… might have a fighting chance.

John shuddered under the revelation that he was considering this, and what that meant. If he was willing to destroy the hard work of all these eons, the creation that he’d poured his life into, for the sake of this one dwarf, it meant that Merle had been right, thirty years ago. Ever since that fateful day when John had visualized eternity, he’d sneered at the concept of individuals and their tiny, fleeting thoughts and actions having any sort of meaning. Yet here he was, preparing to change the fate of the multiverse, for the sake of one single dwarf who’d shown him what love felt like.

He had never been the one to invoke parley before. Would he ruin it if he kept his shirt on? He wasn’t sure he was physically able to take it off anymore.

The black opal rifts in his body grew with every agonizing inhale.

“Hi, Merle. Got a minute?”

Throughout their chess game, while Merle talked about his kids (and wasn’t that something?), John wanted so badly to tell him everything. Everything he felt, everything he’d discovered. How much they were hurting him, every moment of every day. How tired he was. When the Hunger overpowered him at last, when a hundred arms were dragging him into the ground where his individuality would finally be razed completely, when he felt Merle’s arms around him in a desperate, futile effort (and how good it was, for just one moment, to be in Merle’s arms again), when John knew he had only seconds left, there were so many things yet to say.

What would they be? His last words as a human?

_I’m sorry._

_I was wrong._

_I love you._

_Thanks for trying to save me._

_Please help me, please, it hurts so much and I'm so, so scared._

_I want to live._

All unimportant. What value was there in the last pathetic sentiments of a soon-to-be-extinguished existence? None, compared to saving Merle’s life.

“Break the bonds, Merle. Break--!”


End file.
